Technical Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to computer networks and more particularly to dispersing error encoded data.
Description of Related Art
Computing devices are known to communicate data, process data, and/or store data. Such computing devices range from wireless smart phones, laptops, tablets, personal computers (PC), work stations, and video game devices, to data centers that support millions of web searches, stock trades, or on-line purchases every day. In general, a computing device includes a central processing unit (CPU), a memory system, user input/output interfaces, peripheral device interfaces, and an interconnecting bus structure.
As is further known, a computer may effectively extend its CPU by using “cloud computing” to perform one or more computing functions (e.g., a service, an application, an algorithm, an arithmetic logic function, etc.) on behalf of the computer. Further, for large services, applications, and/or functions, cloud computing may be performed by multiple cloud computing resources in a distributed manner to improve the response time for completion of the service, application, and/or function. For example, Hadoop is an open source software framework that supports distributed applications enabling application execution by thousands of computers.
In addition to cloud computing, a computer may use “cloud storage” as part of its memory system. As is known, cloud storage enables a user, via its computer, to store files, applications, etc. on an Internet storage system. The Internet storage system may include a RAID (redundant array of independent disks) system and/or a dispersed storage system that uses an error correction scheme to encode data for storage.
Within data storage systems, there may be instances when problems are encountered when attempting to write data for storage therein. For example, noise, error, interference, etc. may all occur and deleteriously affect a write process such that the data is lost or does not get fully or properly written to its intended storage location. The prior art does not provide an adequate means by which these and related problems may be addressed. For example, when a write operation encounters problems, errors, or failure for any reason, one prior art approach is to reissue a command for the write operation. This can significantly decrease the overall operation of such data storage systems by significantly increasing the network traffic within such data storage systems. Also, such a reissue of a command for the write operation may unfortunately be made while the original command for the write operation is still pending further degrading the performance of such data storage systems as well as increasing the network traffic within such data storage systems. The prior art does not provide means for fully effective or efficient handling of such situations.